Looting the Truth

Nothing better illustrates the deviousness of media than their stories of art allegedly looted by the ‘Nazis’. The camera doesn’t lie; to television viewers and the media’s trusting readership photographic evidence of German wickedness appears undeniable.

The media’s poison-pen scribes should first have heeded the words of Mark Twain, a far better journalist than they could ever be.

A lie will travel the world while the truth is still pulling its boots on.”

Corrupted mainstream media were unprepared for the onset of the internet’s power to expose victors’ propaganda. Recent research across international archives opens up a Pandora’s Box of real history.

Ralph Keeling of the Institute of American Economics says:

The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most monstrous acts of modern times. Its excess beggars description and its magnitude defy condemnation.”

Systematic pillaging and looting by the Allies, particularly the Soviet Union, is still cause of heated disputes between Germany, Russia and the United States. Most of the stolen artworks have never been returned to Germany.

Panorama with River Spree. Museum Island (German: Museumsinsel) is the name given to the northern half of an island in the Spree river in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, the site of the old city of Cölln. It is so called for the complex of five internationally significant museums, all part of the Berlin State Museums that occupy the island’s northern part.

Images of discovered German artworks shown in tabloids and on television are genuine. However, the captions and stories behind the photographs are since proven to be half-lies or simply untrue.

Pictures of U.S General Dwight D. Eisenhower and American troops ‘recovering looted Nazi art’ are nothing of the kind. These are pictures of self-styled democracies art experts and allied troops not retrieving but stealing Germany’s legitimately acquired artworks.

U.S General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures secured from Allied air attacks by their being hidden in a salt mine in Germany. These artworks were looted and shipped to the United States where many are still illegally stored.

Thousands of pieces of artwork, artefacts, jewellery, historical pieces of great art were stored by the Germans in underground caverns. This was done primarily to save these treasures from total destruction wreaked by the day and night 1,000 allied bombing raids.

During the allies war on the Reich the Berlin Bode Museum’s master artworks were evacuated to mines and into two bunkers to avoid their being damaged by the day and night 1,000 allied carpet bombing infernos.

Artworks that media claims to be ‘stolen by the Nazis’ was legitimate German property. National treasures held by German museums and art galleries had been discovered or legally acquired. What readers and television viewers are in fact seeing is the wholesale looting, the plundering of German artworks, treasures, artefacts and various works of art.

Estimates focus on German artworks and cultural treasures secured against allied bombing looted after Germany’s defeat. These included 200,000 works of art that were buried along three kilometres of salt mines containing archival material and three million books. The artworks were not hidden as hiding such from the invaders was impossible.

Berlin’s State Museum alone lost around 400 artworks after World War Two. The German state of Saxony-Anhalt maintains a register entitled Beutekunst (looted art). This inventory catalogues more than 1,000 missing paintings and books believed confiscated by the U.S or the Soviet Union.

British troops and the Naval War Trophies Committee also looted German artworks. These included several pictures by German marine artist Claus Bergen, Wreath in the North Sea in Memory of the Battle of Jutland, The Commander U-boat, Admiral Hipper’s Battle Cruiser at Jutland and The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Von Scheer Bombarding the Spanish Coast. Carl Saltzmann’s German Fleet Manoeuvres on the High Seas and Ehrhard’s Before the Hurricane at Apia Samoa and During the Hurricane at Apia.

These art works were ransacked from the Naval Academy situated at Flensburg-Mürwik. The works of art are documented by a 1965 – 1966 Ministry of Defence file available in Britain’s national archives. These stolen trophies (prizes of war) were sent to various British museums. Five of the looted German works of art remain in the National Maritime Museum in London (NMM).

The artwork, Before the Hurricane at Apia, was lent to the Royal Navy’s HMS Calliope in 1959. This painting was ‘lost’ and formally written off in 1979. The National Maritime Museum admitted in January 2007 that “the documentation at the NMM and the National Archives is not complete”. According to spoliation guidelines, the pictures should be regarded as having been “wrongly taken”.

The collection of paintings in the San Francisco de Young Art Museum was part of the treasures plundered following the discovery of Germany’s secured art treasures. The de Young museum contains 95 paintings of the 202 looted artworks shipped to the United States after the war’s end.

A December 1948 show at San Francisco’s De Young Museum of some of the art plundered from the ransacked salt mines discovered in Bavaria by the occupying United States Army in 1945

Almost all these paintings had come from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin that in 1956 was renamed the Bode Museum. Rembrandt, Hals, Botticelli and Vermeer were among the artists in this stolen collection. The 95 paintings were valued at $50,000,000 in 1948.

The Bode Museum, Berlin in 1904The Bode Museum at the northern end of the Museum Island.The Rubens Hall around 1910 with works by Rubens and Van Dyck in today's Bode Museum. Seven of the paintings shown here probably burned in the Flakbunker FriedrichshainThe Bode Museum; showroom’s photo. Around 1905During World War Two, the Berlin island museums had been 70% destroyed by allied air raids and looting by the allies.Liberated from the clutches of the high interest Western banking elites Hitler’s Third Reich soon became wealthier than the United States of America. When discovered by the invaders the Reich’s gold and silver reserves were shipped to American banks. Here we see troops from General Patton's Third Army stand among gold reserves hidden in a salt mine.American occupying troops in 1945 examine a French impressionist Édouard Manet painting thieved from German art museums.This engraving by the 15th century German artist Albrecht Dürer was among thousands of items stolen from the defeated Reich.An American soldier examines a solid gold statue. This was part of Hermann Goering’s legitimately acquired collection of artworks. These artworks that were plundered by the 7th U.S Army were discovered in a mountainside cave near Schonau am Konigssee, Germany, on May 25, 1945.American troops recovering looted German artworks before their being shipped to the art galleries and museums of the United States.The notorious Thomas Carr Howe Jr. then director of the Palace of the Legion of Honor would do two tours as a Monument Man in Europe during and after the war. His job was to examine and retrieve plundered German artworks. Photo negatives contain photos of art found in the salt mines of Germany during World War II. These looted negatives were surrendered to the San Francisco De Young Museum in 1948.Composition of the Triumph of the Cross sculptures, made of oak in the beginning of XIII century.A U.S Military Policeman makes certain that this American looted painting by German artist Franz Hals was not going to be stolen.'The Graces in the Gardens of the Hesperides' by Peter Paul Rubens. This artwork with hundreds of thousands of great artworks was looted by the allies before being placed in U.S, Soviet and British art galleries and museums.Prizes of War: America’s curator Nina Valvo checks out Portrait of a Young Man.San Francisco’s De Young Museum art expert Dr Ernest G Troche inspects the stolen Vermeer.An American soldier inspects priceless art Stolen from the Reich’s museums.This photo provided by The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art of Dallas, shows Monuments Man George Stout, third from left with an N on his shirt, moving the central panel of the plundered Ghent Altarpiece discovered in Altaussee, Austria in July of 1945.

Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh was a freelance media writer and columnist for thirty-years. The Irish journalist now writes and broadcasts solely for independent alternative media. Visit SpinFreeHistory.com to see all of Mike's available books.

The depth of violence dealt to Germany by the rest of the world are deeper than the ocean’s deepest canyon. My father-in-law, who is 87, has told me several times how the German people were “unfriendly” to U.S. military personnel who were stationed there shortly after the war. He was there, along with his wife, in the 50s (my wife was born near Münchweiler in ’59). He admits that the Germans had plenty of reason to be unfriendly to the Americans. He and I have had many conversations about ww2, Hitler, and the results that we’re seeing… Read more »

Dear Mike, Thank you very much for this interesting article !!! You write an interesting sentence; ‘The German state of Saxony-Anhalt maintains a register entitled Beutekunst (looted art). This inventory catalogues more than 1,000 missing paintings and books believed confiscated by the U.S or the Soviet Union.’ I could not find this register. Can you help me to find out? This because I would like to validate my research hypothesis. I try to find out where the painting is with title; ‘Painter on the road to Tarascon’ also known as ‘Painter on his way to work’. Till… Read more »

It should be mentioned that 95 % of Arno Breker´s sculptures were willfully desstroyed by using them as targets on firing ranges; Breker was called the ´Michelangelo of the 20th.Century.´ It should also be pointed out, that German troops at no time engaged in art-theft. I have a letter from the Louvre confirming this. Gerard Frederick

US Jews are looters of gold and work of Art every where on the globe ,Germany , Egyptian Pyramids and temples , in Japan , Vietnam, Irak , Iran , Syria . So called Archeologists and Collectors are just thieves in disguise This is the secret of their fortune . I am sad my dad was dead too soon to see the truth exposed today . He knew the hidden WW2 story … Thank you for your article and photos .

I have been talking to a friend of mine and defending Hitler as just another Political Leader who was responding to the Communist and other threats to His nation. He was not Satan Incarnate.
He brought up the “looted” Art to defend his position. I had no answer, now I do. Thanks.
It seems just about everything we were taught in school about WWII and National Socialist Germany was a lie.

During the Weimar period in 1920’s Germany, the Jews propped up their pseudo art to be desirable, thereby de-valuing authentic German art. Then, the Jews bought up much of the authentic art. During the war and on the back end, the Jewish media has accused the Germans of “looting art” when in fact they were rescuing it from the indiscriminate ‘allied’ bombing campaign.

I realise I go on about the importance of sharing but I cannot overdo it. I shared AFRICA’S KILLING FIELDS on walls of White South African / Rhodesia groups. In 24-hours the Renegade Article shares shot up by nearly 200 and the likes were even greater in numbers. If we are going to smash media’s monopoly this is the easiest way to do it. Read Walter Mitty’s letter. ~ Mike

Great article, Mike. What a travesty. What the National Socialists did in cleaning up “modern art” and preserving real art was a great achievement. Then the Allies destroyed and stole, and the rest is history and we are living in a world of crap culture.

Mike, I look forward to each new article and getting notified by e-mail that a new one is up. This is one of your best articles and very important for people to understand. And by the way, I got the 4 books of yours Saturday in the mail that are going to be a grand Christmas present for my step-dad. He loves WW2 history and I can’t wait till he reads these “Witness To History” (parts 1 thru 4). What a present to give this year! 14/88